


Return to Oz

by loopyhoopyfrood



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Gen, Wizard of Oz!au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-14 23:21:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21237194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loopyhoopyfrood/pseuds/loopyhoopyfrood
Summary: When the cyclone finally returns, Phryne Fisher does not run. Instead she embraces it, stepping forward and allowing the winds to carry her away.After all, she has a sister to find.





	1. The Cyclone

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick PSA: this is currently a WIP. I have eight chapters written so far, but it's not finished and I honestly have no idea how long it will take me to reach the end. I'm hoping that uploading it will be the incentive I need to get a move on with it, but if WIPs aren't your thing I completely understand.
> 
> If you decide to read this anyway, I really hope you enjoy it! This is my first attempt at writing a full length, multi-chapter fic, and my first time writing a lot of these characters, so this is definitely something new for me!
> 
> Enjoy ❤

The party was in full swing by the time the storm arrived. One moment the sky was calm, the sun having just dipped below the horizon, the next it was filled with dark clouds that threw down a thunderous rain that could be heard even over the gramophone and carefree laughter of the partygoers indoors. Lightning crackled, illuminating the room with flashes of bright light as the lamps flickered, the music interrupted by rolls of booming thunder.

To most of the attendees, the storm was just that. A few gathered at the windows, marvelling at the intensity of the sudden onslaught before returning to their drinks and dancing. The rest barely noticed; too caught up in the party atmosphere to pay much attention to the weather, no matter how unusual. To Phryne Fisher, however, the storm meant everything.

It only took a moment for her to politely excuse herself from the current conversation, and soon she was gone, having slipped gracefully through the crowd and out into the hallway. She practically ran through the kitchen, steadying herself for a fraction of a moment before fighting open the back door and stepping out into the garden beyond.

Within seconds she was socked, her black sequined dress clinging to her skin, but she barely noticed. Fierce winds tore into her, ripping the barrette from her hair and forcing her backwards, and the rain lashed at her skin, plastering her dark hair to her face. Phryne hardly noticed, staring at the dark clouds with anticipation. To anyone else, this was just a storm. Unexpected and ferocious, but a storm nonetheless. 

Phryne knew differently.

Half blinded by rain, she peered out into the dark sky. The storm was intense, but if Phryne was right then this was just the precursor. For a long moment she held her breath, desperately scanning the little she could see of the clouds above for the phenomenon she was waiting for. A slight swirling in the distance caught her eye, and with a lethal combination of determination and desperation, she stepped further into the storm.

“Phryne Fisher!”

There was only one person Phryne knew with a voice loud enough to be heard over the howling winds. With a roll of her eyes she turned back to face the house, keeping her feet firmly planted on the sodden grass.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing girl?!” Her aunt was aghast, clutching the door frame as if it was the only thing keeping the storm from spiriting her away. “Come inside at once!”

“Sorry Aunt P!” Phryne shouted back, battling to be heard as the winds became even more ferocious. “I’m afraid I’ve got a storm to catch!”

“Catch? You’ll catch nothing but your death out there!”

“I survived perfectly well last time.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake-”

By now Phryne could only make out the vague shape of her aunt, still clutching the doorway, any details obscured by the sheets of rain that fell between them. Yet she could picture her aunt’s expression perfectly; a resigned exasperation with a hint of pity, carefully shrouded in a well-maintained mask of public propriety.

“That was a dream Phryne! A- a childish imagining is all.”

“I have to find her!”

“Phryne-”

Anything Prudence Stanley was about to say was abruptly cut off as a deafening howl cut through the air. Phryne spun to see the rain parting, torn in two by the towering swirl of intense wind that had suddenly appeared in the distance. The cyclone had arrived.

For a moment Phryne was frozen, held in place by an instinctual fear response as the huge column battered its way towards her, pulling into itself anything insufficiently fixed to the ground.

“This is absolute madness!”

Her aunt’s cry, only barely audible, pulled her from her paralysis.

“I know!” She shouted, not knowing if her aunt could hear her. “Wish me luck!”

Turning towards the house for a final time, unsure if her aunt could still see her through the rain, Phryne raised a hand in what might be a final goodbye. Without waiting for a response, she turned back to the storm, finding the tornado almost upon her. Taking a deep breath and fixing her mind upon her destination, Phryne Fisher stepped purposefully into the winds and allowed the cyclone to carry her away.


	2. The Good Witch

Time failed to exist within the cyclone. The minutes and hours that usually governed every waking moment had simply vanished, leaving nothing but ferocious winds that tore through her as they threw her around as if she were weightless. Phryne screamed, the helplessness even worse than she remembered, but kept her mind fixed in desperation on the place she wished to go, the place she knew the tornado had come from and hoped that it would return to. To everyone else Oz was a story, the imaginary creation of a traumatised child. To Phryne it was everything.

She couldn’t have said how long she spent there, being flown through their air in the swirling cyclone of harsh winds, and she did not remember ever falling asleep, but suddenly she was waking. Her eyes were closed, as they had been ever since she stepped into the cyclone, but slowly she became aware that she was still, the air around her calm and quiet. For a moment she simply lay, breathing in the still air, unwilling to open her eyes in case she found herself still where she started, laying amongst the roses and petunias of her aunt’s garden.

Eventually she could bear it no longer, and, clutching desperately to the hope that had carried her into the storm in the first place, she opened her eyes. Cautiously she sat up, and as her gaze alighted on a worn path of yellow brick she couldn’t help but let out a sob. It had taken her too many years, but she had finally arrived back in Oz.

“Phryne Fisher!”

Phryne leapt to her feet, startled. Leaning against an old, gnarled tree stood a woman dressed in what appeared to be a finely cut suit dappled in browns and greys. The waistcoat under the tweed jacket shimmered with a subtle gold, and the curls hidden under a wide-brimmed hat were a vibrant shade of orange.

“Well you obviously know who I am.” Phryne said, attempting to stand and almost falling as the heel of her shoe sunk into the soft grass. Quickly regaining her balance, she faced the stranger with a polite smile. “I’m afraid I can’t say the same about you.”

“Around here they call me the Good Witch of the East.” The woman strode forwards with a grin, holding out her hand in welcome. “Otherwise known as Elizabeth McMillian.”

“Mac!”

Phryne ignored the outstretched hand and pulled Mac in for a hug that the witch eagerly returned. Although determined to return to it, Phryne had in no way missed the land of Oz. She had missed Mac.

Eventually Mac pulled away, and Phryne took the chance to examine her old friend. Now that she searched for them, the similarities to the child she’d met on her previous visit were obvious. The open, childish joy had gone from her face, but the hint of mischief that had always glinted in Mac’s eyes still remained. The long hair was gone, replaced with a head of short waves, but its vibrant colour hadn’t dulled in the slightest. Her clothing was tailored, a far cry from the torn trousers and muddied shirt that Phryne’s memory of her wore, but it seemed Mac’s preference for men’s clothing had failed to abandon her despite the years that had passed.

“I’m surprised you recognised me.”

“There’s only one woman who’s mad enough to walk into a tornado.”

“Not mad, Mac. Determined.”

The look of sympathy that passed Mac’s face told Phryne that further words were unnecessary. In any other circumstance, and if Mac were any other person, the hand that squeezed her own in a wordless apology would have been nothing but an annoyance. Phryne didn’t need sympathy, didn’t want sympathy, but from Mac it meant everything.

“I’m here to take her back.”

“Phryne-”

“Don’t.”

Phryne pulled her hand away. The brief flicker of rejection on Mac’s face made her wince, but the pity in that one utterance of her name had threatened tears, and the liberty of crying was something Phryne couldn’t afford right now. She could cry once she had her sister back.

“How long has it been?”

“Phryne-”

“How long?”

“Eighty-six years.”

Logically, Phryne had been expecting such an answer. Time flowed differently in Oz, her last trip having lasted several days and yet having found herself returned home mere minutes after leaving. Emotionally, however, Phryne felt as if a house had just landed on her.

“You’re looking good for your age.” She quipped, resorting to humour in an attempt to find her footing once more.

“I moisturise.” Replied Mac, completely deadpan, and Phryne found herself letting out a small laugh. Her moment of respite was short lived however, broken by the question that Mac couldn’t stop herself from asking.

“Phryne, I have to ask. What happened?”

Anticipating the question from the moment the two friends had reunited, Phryne had expected to find herself dreading the answer. Despite the years the memory still carried fresh pain each time it was relived, and yet, as Phryne sunk down to sit cross-legged on the ground the words flowed out of her as a river with a broken dam.

“After you left, we continued on down the road.” Her fingers traced the edge of a worn yellow brick as she spoke, “The Emerald City was waiting for us after all. We almost made it.

“There was a- a carnival of sorts I suppose, just off the road. Janey-” Phryne’s voice cracked, and her fingers pressed harder into the yellow brick. “Janey didn’t want to leave the road but I was insistent.”

Phryne knew she was leaving much unsaid. Their first meeting with the Good Witch, where she had handed Janey a pair of sparkling red pumps and told them not to stray from the path. The walk before they’d met Mac in Munchkintown, where Phryne had convinced Janey to give her the pumps, scaring her with parroted lessons of the danger of taking things from strangers and imagined theorisings of the threat posed by unfamiliar magic, when all she really wanted was the chance to have something so valuable and beautiful for herself. The fight they’d had by the side of the road, the bright lights and joyful music of the distant carnival the perfect temptation for the pair of young girls, one adamant, one afraid. The moment when Phryne had made their choice for them, stalking off across the field towards the mass of tents, the feeling of triumph when after only a handful of steps small feet had run after her own, unwilling to remain alone on the yellow brick road.

Leaving much unsaid, but knowing that Mac would understand anyway, Phryne took a breath and continued.

“The carnival was amazing. Everything a child could want. We wandered for what felt like hours, picking up tokens we found on the floor and exchanging them for sweets or a chance to play one of the stalls. When we managed to reach the middle, we found there was a show in the main tent, but they were charging a few coins for entry. Janey saw the banners with pictures of all the acts, acrobats, dancers, clowns, and she was so excited. We didn’t have the coins, so I snuck us both in, crawling under a loose flap at the back of the tent.”

“Now why doesn’t that surprise me.” Joked Mac softly, eliciting a small smile of appreciation from Phryne despite the trembling of her shoulders that betrayed the toil reliving the memory was taking on her.

“I don’t know what happened.” Phryne continued, the confession sticking in her throat. “One moment she was there next to me, the next-”

The next Janey had been gone. Phryne had hesitated, waited too long, too reluctant to leave the enchantment and magic of the performance, and by the time she’d slipped back out under the tent flap there had been no sign of her younger sister. It hadn’t been long before she’d been running, screaming Janey’s name as she ran haphazardly through the maze of tents and stalls.

“We never found her.” Phryne said, knowing that Mac would fill in for herself everything she hadn’t said out loud. “Gal found me eventually, calmed me down, told me she’d do everything in her power to find Janey. She tried to locate her, but she was either no longer in Oz or…”

Phryne trailed off, and Mac could understand why. There was only one other reason the previous Good Witch would have been unable to find someone if they were in Oz, and it was an option that Phryne refused to even consider.

“It was all my fault Mac.”

“Nonsense.” Said Mac, and her tone told Phryne that she would accept no arguments. “Gal said the same thing, you know, but you’re both wrong. The only person who’s to blame is that bastard who took her.”

There was a pause, Phryne unwilling to turn down Mac’s words of comfort and yet unable to accept them, before a thought occurred to her.

“You said you’re the Good Witch of the North now. Could you-?”

“I’ve tried, Phryne. She’s not here.”

Mac squeezed Phryne’s hand, her heart breaking at the stubborn determination on her friend’s face. The page in her grimoire had been bookmarked since the day she inherited it, the incantation repeated so often that she knew it by heart. Over eighty years of casting the seeking spell, and Mac had never once received a response. 

“How did this all happen anyway?” Said Phryne, suddenly desperate to break the silence. “I never would have pictured you as a Witch. Last I heard you were more fixated on science.”

“Yes well, it turns out magic is just science that most people don’t know yet.”

Phryne laughed softly, but her enquiring gaze told Mac that she was genuinely interested in how Mac had ended up in such a pivotal role, so far from the dreams of becoming a doctor that she’d had as a child. Sighing, Mac continued.

“Gal found me, after she’d sent you home. Thought I might know something. I didn’t, and that would have been that, but then these showed up. Appeared right in my hands.”

Mac rummaged for a moment in a brown satchel that had previously gone un-noticed, before pulling out a pair of objects that were all too familiar.

“I thought I’d lost them.” Phryne whispered, taking hold of the small pair of red, sparkling pumps with a delicateness that was usually saved for fine china or precariously full cups of tea.

The pumps had carried her against her will back to Australia, the Good Witch’s magic forcing her heels to click against each other and sweep her away from Oz, and from Janey. Phryne had put them on again every night, sneaking them from their hiding place under a loose floorboard even when her feet grew too big to fit comfortably. Every morning she’d clicked her heels together, hoping and praying that the third click would send her flying back to Oz. It never did.

Then had come her father’s inheritance, and their move to England, and Phryne had torn her cases apart trying to find her one tangible hope of finding her sister. But the shoes were gone, vanished to the place where all lost things go.

“Gal took it as a sign, enrolled me in her academy and took me on as her own private student. Honestly, I think she took the loss of Janey as a personal failure. She never stopped searching, but it took its toll. As soon as I graduated she just up and left, and I was left with her title and grimoire.”

“You didn’t consider just, I don’t know, not accepting it?”

“Didn’t seem I had much of a choice.” Mac shrugged, “Anyway, turns out all the other Witches are actually men. Figured they needed a woman in there somewhere.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Said Phryne with a smile, holding up an imaginary glass. Laughing, Mac held up one of her own and they tapped their invisible glasses against each other before each tipping their hand back to take an imaginary swig.

Their toast complete, the two friends drifted into a companionable silence, each happy to let the moment linger. Eventually however, Phryne could delay no longer, the yellow brick road that peeked from amongst the grass a constant reminder of why she’d stepped into the storm in the first place.

“I never did get to meet the Wizard.” She mused out loud, knowing that Mac would understand.

“He’s powerful Phryne, but I’m not sure he’s that powerful.”

“Sadly, he’s my only chance.”

“So you’re, what? Going to just ask him to bring Janey back?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Phryne looked over at Mac, and despite the sadness there was a familiar glint of mischief in her eyes that made Mac wonder if it was Phryne or the Wizard she should be feeling sorry for.

“I’m going to _demand_ he bring her back.”

“That’s the Phryne I know.” Mac got to her feet, holding out a hand to help Phryne up. Together they walked through the long grass to reach the start of Phryne’s path, the toes of their shoes just brushing the first brick.

“I know you’ll never use them, but here.” Mac pulled her wand from the inside of her jacket, a long brown instrument covered with intricate swirls that shimmered golden, and tapped the red shoes that still dangled from Phryne’s hand. There was a cloud of golden mist, and when it dissipated the shoes had grown, lengthened so that they were no longer shoes for a child, but would fit perfectly the woman who held them.

Phryne stared for a moment, unsure, before slowly bending to unbuckle her black t-straps, one at a time replacing them with the red, rhinestone pumps.

“Should probably do something about that dress too, you’ll cause a riot wandering around in that.”

Another haze of gold, and Phryne’s slightly scandalous black party dress was replaced with a demure day dress, patterned with delicate blue and white check.

“Hardly my style any more Mac.” Joked Phryne, attempting to dislodge the lump in her throat.

“I didn’t exactly have much to work with.” Mac quipped back, attempting not to stare as the woman in front of her was suddenly overlaid with the memory of a small child dressed in the same blue and white check, the resemblance suddenly all so clear.

“Goodbye Mac.”

Staring straight ahead, determination in her gaze, Phryne took her first step, her red heel clacking on the worn yellow brick that seemed to spring to life under her foot. Mac watched as the road grew brighter with each step, welcoming back its long-forgotten traveller. Before long Phryne had disappeared beyond the horizon, leaving Mac alone with the softly waving grass and a path of yellow brick that was fading once again.


End file.
